A plasma is a material phase comprising charged particles, ions and electrons. Typically, it consists of an ionized gas, that is a gas comprising free electrons which are not linked to an atom or a molecule. Free electrons make the plasma a conductor of electricity.
The invention relates more particularly to cold plasmas at atmospheric pressure.
Currently, the production of cold plasma jets at atmospheric pressure is the subject of much research, taking into consideration the increasing importance of their application in numerous and varied fields, such as biomedical, medicine, sterilization, decontamination and material treatment.
These cold plasma jets have, however, the disadvantage of only allowing small surfaces to be processed, due to the small dimension of the jets which can currently be produced.
It has therefore been proposed to implement scanning systems so as to scan the surfaces to be treated using the cold plasma jet produced according to conventional techniques. Scanning, however, requires the implementation of a system capable of setting the plasma jet into motion over the surface to be treated, which makes the device relatively complex and increases its bulk considerably.
It has also been proposed to couple a large number of plasma jets from multi-electrode and multi-generator systems. Thus, in order to obtain n plasma jets, this solution proposes to associate n electrodes with an equal number of generators. Such a coupling does in fact make it possible to increase the surface area of the zone to be treated by multiplying the plasma jet sources. However, in order for the plasma jets not to interfere, it is necessary to separate the discharge electrodes. Moreover, this solution is relatively expensive, bulky and complex to implement due to the multiplication of discharge electrodes and/or of capillaries and gas supply pipes.
Current technology definitely allows a reduction in the size of the plasma sources (see microcavity devices in particular—IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, Vol. 41, No. 4, April 2013). This miniaturization, however, has a non-negligible cost and is very complex to implement. It also does not allow the generation of plasmas of large dimensions, or on the contrary sufficiently small to treat targets having at least one very small dimension and a large aspect ratio, such as endoscopic systems.